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The Social Life of Information
book

The Social Life of Information

by John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid, David Weinberger
February 2017
Beginner content levelBeginner
352 pages
8h 28m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from The Social Life of Information

Chapter Two

Agents and Angels

I’m sorry to hear that you are depressed.

It’s true, I am unhappy.

Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

I need some help, that much seems certain.

What would it mean to you if you got some help?

Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.

Tell me more about your family.

In this exchange, the therapist was Eliza, a legendary computer program written in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT. The identity of the patient is fortunately unknown. According to folklore, Eliza software persuaded many people to pour out their souls in the belief that a person, not a software program, was responding.

The software behind Eliza has since developed in many directions, including, for example, customer ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781633692428